What if a climate scientist fell in the forest?

LOS ANGELES, April 10, 2014 — If a climate scientist falls in the forest, is anybody, anywhere affected?

That burning question is at the heart of a new strategy designed by a leftist writer unfamiliar with the concept of leverage.

A column written for MSNBC expressed frustration at the lack of action on climate change. Like scientology and breakdancing, climate change became a sensation for a precious few. Most of the world found the topic and its supporters boring.

The column laments the inability of climate change supporters to forcibly make seven billion people care about some bizarre concept of environmental Armageddon. Expensive gatherings at luxury European hotels has failed to produce any meaningful political process. While opinion is divided on the issue itself, the newest proposed MSNBC solution has the power to unify us all.

“So at this point it’s absurd to keep asking the scientific community to churn out more reports. In fact, it might almost be more useful if they went on strike: until you pay attention to what we’ve already told you, we won’t be telling you more.”

Go on strike? Quit? Refuse to preach?

If carried out, this threat may still not advance climate change. However, it probably will lead to an increase in another religion, such as one that actually involves God. After all, getting climate scientists and other liberals to cease their noise pollution is what most conservatives pray for every night.

If climate scientists went on strike, what would be the downside?

Very rarely does somebody inadvertently do such a spectacular job of making the opposing side’s case.

“They’ve done their job. (And they’ve done it for free – working on these endless IPCC reports is a volunteer job).”

Volunteer job? Finally, a liberal admits that these climatologists have been wasting their time as well as ours. They poured blood, sweat and tears into an unpaid job and found out nobody cares. Yes, the proper thing to do in this case is give up and go do something meaningful that the world can care about.

MSNBC seems to miss the point of how a strike works. People who provide actual value threaten to go on strike because they believe they are indispensable. They have what their employer desperately needs.

Now analyze the climatologists. They work for free churning out reports that get ignored. By definition, once something provided is utterly useless, it is no longer a good or service. Commerce requires value.

Climate scientists going on strike would be like the French going on strike. How would anybody tell? Not since Married With Children’s Peggy Bundy threatened her husband Al with a strike has a refusal to do anything been so celebrated.

“Citing years of frustration over their advice being misunderstood, misrepresented or simply ignored, America’s foremost experts in every field collectively tendered their resignation Monday.”

“Since you don’t seem to care about things you don’t understand, screw you. We quit.”

If the climatologists were to all go on strike, they would learn what The Onion wickedly figured out in the last century.

“Because the experts’ advice was barely followed, the mass resignation is expected to have little impact on the lives of most Americans.”

This is bigger than one leftist columnist, one failed television network, or even a few failed liberal politicians. This is about an entire ideology that continues to confuse power with authority. Power is the ability to force people to do things. Saddam Hussein had power. Vladimir Putin has power. Authority is the moral respect that causes people to willingly follow a person. Liberals have amassed power in America, but still lack the authority to govern in a center-right nation.

Telling climate change skeptics that they are stupid or evil is not a good selling point. Trying to force people with better things to do to drop everything and obsess over nonsense is not a winning strategy. As much as it hurts the left to hear this, if their issues truly mattered, more people would care. The masses are not imbeciles. They are bright enough to see the elites as condescending bookworms with lousy people skills.

The leftist climatologists will never go on strike. Like many liberals, they love the sound of their own voices and remain convinced that if they just force their world vision on everybody, the result will be a thankful public grateful for being browbeaten into submission. The left could never accept the shock to the system that comes with leaving and having nobody follow or care in the slightest.

The issue is not whether the leftist climatologists and their MSNBC apologists are right or wrong, although they are wrong. What matters is that in the court of public opinion, they do not matter. They are boring. An increase in glossy reports with slick Powerpoint slides will not make these people any less insufferable.

That is what is truly beyond dispute. All the kicking, screaming, stomping and threatening to stop providing what most people never asked for will have zero effects on the lives of normal people.

The good news is that even if the liberals obsessed with climate change refuse to quit speaking, conservatives can be happy knowing most of the world long ago quit listening.

When enough people refuse to accept a message, it becomes apparent that the messengers have nothing of value to say.

Brooklyn born, Long Island raised and now living in Los Angeles, Eric Golub is a politically conservative columnist, blogger, author, public speaker, satirist and comedian. Read more from Eric at his TYGRRRR EXPRESS blog. Eric is the author of the book trilogy “Ideological Bigotry, “Ideological Violence,” and “Ideological Idiocy.”